Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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New York Times (12.20.03) - Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Jim Yardley
Her outspoken advocacy has irked officials. Local security guards sometimes shadow Gao, and she suspects her phone is tapped. "I'm not afraid," she said in a recent interview. "The worst that will happen to me is that I'll die, and I've seen enough of this life not to be afraid of that."
Gao came out of retirement in 1996 when a group of doctors in Zhengzou asked her to consult on a mysterious case. Gao soon realized it was AIDS. She followed up that diagnosis with visits to different villages, where she discovered a public health catastrophe kept secret by provincial officials. Tainted blood sales in the 1990s had infected many poor farmers and their families.
Gao delivered medicines and pamphlets, arranged adoptions for AIDS orphans, and exposed quack medicines and practitioners who take advantage of HIV/AIDS patients.
Although she was forbidden to go to Washington in 2001 to accept an award from the Global Health Council, China's government allowed her to give a brief lecture recently at a Beijing AIDS conference. Afterwards, she told reporters that more needs to be done, and more quickly, to fight HIV/AIDS. Asked why she was willing to make such blunt statements, she quoted Confucius: "The ordinary people in a state have a responsibility for its rise and fall."
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